Increasing Power Efficiency In Redundant Power Operation; Voltage Regulation; Improved Thermal Sensors And Fan Control - HP DL370 - ProLiant - G6 Performance Introduction Manual

Figure 5. Power/Efficiency curve for the 750 W HP power supply
95%
90%
85%
80%
75%
70%
65%
60%
55%
50%
0 100
Represents 92% power efficiency Represents 92% power efficiency
Through the introduction of these different wattage power supplies, HP allows users to choose a
power supply that meets, but does not exceed their needs. Oversized and lightly loaded power
supplies do not run as efficiently as those that are highly loaded.

Increasing power efficiency in redundant power operation

With ProLiant G6 servers, customers can select a power supply operation mode for redundant power
systems. This ROM-based setup provides the user with 'High Efficiency' mode and 'Balanced' mode
selections. In Balanced mode, both power supplies provide power equally. This mode ensures full
redundancy but can result in higher power consumption when power supplies are operating with
reduced loads and lower power efficiency. The High Efficiency mode means the system will only use
one power supply until system load exceeds a certain threshold. The second power supply stays
online maintaining redundancy but does not supply power until needed. Either selection still provides
full power redundancy.

Voltage regulation

Voltage regulators convert the 12V DC supplied from the server power supply into a variety of lower
voltages used by the different system components. HP has developed voltage regulators that have
higher peak efficiencies and maintain greater than 90 percent efficiency over a broad range of
power requirements. The net result is about an eight percent gain in DC power efficiency, which
results in almost a ten percent efficiency gain in AC input power.
These efficiency gains come with no loss in performance and require no configuration by the user.

Improved thermal sensors and fan control

The ProLiant 300-series G6 servers include many more embedded thermal sensors compared to the
previous ProLiant server generation. Up to 64 thermal sensors —referred to as a "sea of sensors" —
are located on DIMMs, hard drives, and throughout the server. The actual number of sensors varies
by server platform.
200 300 400
Output Power (Watts)
500 600 700 800
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